HOOPS ON CARRIERS: A SHIP THAT’S SAILED?

There will be more than 5,000 men’s college basketball games played between NCAA Division I teams this season. None, however, on anything that floats or has a flight deck.

The aircraft carriers haven’t sunk. But the games on them have, at least for this year and perhaps the foreseeable future.

Scott McGaugh, marketing director for San Diego’s Midway Museum, which hosted San Diego State-Syracuse last November, puts it like this: “At the end of the day, being 1,000 feet out on the water and 50 feet (above) the water, aircraft carriers might not be the best venue for basketball games. It’s just a tough proposition all around.”

The final stat line: Four attempts, one completion when originally scheduled, one postponed because of weather, one canceled at halftime, one scrapped before tipoff. And four financial washouts.

“If you’re doing this to make money, this is not the right business,” says Mike Whalen of Morale Entertainment, the promoter of the original Carrier Classic in 2011 on the USS Carl Vinson docked in San Diego Bay. “If you’re doing to it to help our troops and our veterans, that’s a different motivation.

“Greed and avarice pop their heads up. I think people all of a sudden saw dollar signs where there aren’t any, and they diluted the market with other events.”

The other problem: luck.

Whalen’s plan on the Carl Vinson was to build a second court in the hangar bay in case of inclement weather, but he abandoned that a few days before the game and rolled the dice. It didn’t rain, he got a spectacular sunset, President Obama was courtside, No. 1-ranked North Carolina was playing, ESPN got a record TV audience.

An hour later, it poured.

But people viewed it as a fireworks show instead of distress flares, and by 2012 there were three floating events on Veterans Day weekend: SDSU-Syracuse on the Midway, Georgetown-Florida on the USS Bataan in Jacksonville, Fla., and Whalen’s Ohio State-Marquette game on the USS Yorktown in Charleston, S.C.

All the events surrounding the Midway game were junked, and the game itself nearly was as well before Fox Sports San Diego wrote a check to save it. Then a November storm pushed the game from Friday to Sunday afternoon, when flag-snapping wind gave us a packed-in Syracuse zone and 1-of-18 shooting by SDSU behind the 3-point arc.

The Battle on the Midway was fortunate. At least the whole game was played.

The two East Coast games had their hardwood courts rendered skating rinks by evening condensation, which elicited silly scenes of coaches and players on their knees with towels in a futile attempt to dry them.

The only thing wetter was the books. The city of Jacksonville lost a reported $736,000 from a game that never got past halftime.

Positive Impact, a New Jersey sports consulting firm that sold sponsorships for the Carrier Classic, sued Whalen and Morale Entertainment in February, seeking $127,000 in unpaid commission and other fees. The case is working its way through the Superior Court of New Jersey.